Karl Schroeder Quotes

But what good's abundance if nobody can experience it?

Her own sincerity returned to her now like the remembrance of a crime.

The great commandment of the narratives is that your life must be meaningful, said Charon. If knowing the truth strips the meaning away, then the truth must be suppressed.

His lantern guttered and finally went out. “Shit,” he said, shaking it. “Excuse me.”
“You’re not afraid of the dark, are you?” she asked, chiding.
“No, ma’am. I’m afraid of what’s in it.”

Idiots. They were losing everything because of their short-sightedness. Maybe they deserved to lose it.

He was acutely aware of how little attention the people who lived here actually paid to their immediate environment. They seemed cut off from their own senses, cocooned away from their bodies in the infinite spaces of inscape. Cybernetic realities were more real to most people now than their own lives, it seemed. And any connection between those internal spaces and the physical world seemed entirely accidental.

“Which do you prefer?”
Armiger leaned over her and kissed her cheek. “Which what do I prefer?”
“Do you prefer making love or reading?” Her voice held a teasing note, but he had learned there were frequently hidden needs behind her teasing questions.
“To read is to make love to the world,” he said. “But to make love to a woman is to feel like the world is reading you.”
She smiled, not comprehending, and fell asleep.

Even the gods fight boredom in vain.

Only the dead are free of the influence of others.

It's time to abandon the plans of the entity that enslaved me all these centuries, he said. And time to start making my own.

All sound is music, he had said, and there is no place without sound.

I haven't organized my life as a narrative, you know. I'm not sure you'll understand.
As listeners, we are not required to understand, said Qiingi. Only to care.

Our whole life we’ve lived in a world of softened edges and easy decisions. All except once. One time, when someone had to look at the world through adult eyes and even the grown-ups who survived the crash with us failed the test. Someone had to look at the world as it was, and make the hard decisions that were necessary—not to romanticize, not to retreat into illusions. You did it then. I’m asking you to do it again. See what’s really going on here. See what’s real.

That’s what being human means: to be master of your own fate.

When she looked around, she saw the same expression of mindless fear in the eyes of the men with her. They were all in the same boat—carried forward by habits of training, minds blank with fear hence too stupid to sensibly turn and run. It was this stupor of fear that would later be counted as courage.